01-08-2016, 05:47 PM
I'm going to be putting in a door to my partial basement. Currently there are Bilco doors and then steps going down to the basement but no other segregation between the outside air and basement which is directly under the master bedroom, which is proving to be...cold this time of year.
Because it's such a small opening I'll no doubt have to order a custom door. If it were only short I'd perhaps consider cutting down an off the shelf door but it's also narrow.
The sides of the opening are the ends of cinder blocks and the header is a piece of angle iron and I guess concrete (see pictures). My plan would be to cut out the couple of pieces of rebar and then grind down (carefully!) the extra mortar on the concave part of the blocks so that they're all fairly uniform. I'd then fur out the concave portion with perhaps PVC trim (I'd consider PT but I don't really want to plane that in case it winds up being an odd depth) and then do either a PT 2x4/2x6 or maybe 5/4 PT decking over that to create a uniform opening. I'd use probably Tapcons to attach everything and then again through the door frame assuming that the wood thickness isn't really enough to anchor the door to. For the header I suppose I can drill and tap into the angle iron and then Tapcons into the concrete unless there's an alternative? Perhaps a wood header supported by the side casing and attached to the angle iron with construction adhesive would be sufficiently strong given that it's not truly an exterior door?
Because it's such a small opening I'll no doubt have to order a custom door. If it were only short I'd perhaps consider cutting down an off the shelf door but it's also narrow.
The sides of the opening are the ends of cinder blocks and the header is a piece of angle iron and I guess concrete (see pictures). My plan would be to cut out the couple of pieces of rebar and then grind down (carefully!) the extra mortar on the concave part of the blocks so that they're all fairly uniform. I'd then fur out the concave portion with perhaps PVC trim (I'd consider PT but I don't really want to plane that in case it winds up being an odd depth) and then do either a PT 2x4/2x6 or maybe 5/4 PT decking over that to create a uniform opening. I'd use probably Tapcons to attach everything and then again through the door frame assuming that the wood thickness isn't really enough to anchor the door to. For the header I suppose I can drill and tap into the angle iron and then Tapcons into the concrete unless there's an alternative? Perhaps a wood header supported by the side casing and attached to the angle iron with construction adhesive would be sufficiently strong given that it's not truly an exterior door?